


Trapped

by catholicorprotestant



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mentions of Suicide Attempts, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, angsty, mentions of eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catholicorprotestant/pseuds/catholicorprotestant
Summary: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.The words had haunted anyone in Tooru’s life since he was a child. Washing his hands five time in the morning, before eating, and at night with scalding hot water even when it hurt, flipping the light switch on and off twenty times, rearranging his books and toys for hours on end. Each attempt to stop it always ended in a meltdown, what his family later learned were how he has a child had a panic attacks. They grew more evident the older he got. Everything had to be perfect.





	Trapped

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so a little angst that I thought up the other day. Hope you enjoy :)

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. 

The words had haunted anyone in Tooru’s life since he was a child. Washing his hands five time in the morning, before eating, and at night with scalding hot water even when it hurt, flipping the light switch on and off twenty times, rearranging his books and toys for hours on end. Each attempt to stop it always ended in a meltdown, what his family later learned were how he as a child had a panic attacks. They grew more evident the older he got. Everything had to be perfect. 

Volleyball had come as a welcome to him. It took over his life, and the anxiety and nervous habits went away. He focused so much of his time and energy on it, and there was little that one could do to stop it. A healthy outlet his parents and family had said with a sigh of relief, and maybe, just maybe he was cured. 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five….Fifty. Fifty serves, no more, no less before and after each practice, and even games. Hajime had watched him countless times, internally counting them in his mind as he knew Tooru was doing as well. He had witness first hand, the tears streaming down his best friend’s face when he was tired, hungry, stressed, or physically exhausted, but he couldn’t stop. If he did less, he would mess up, his team would lose, the gym would burn down...

So Hajime found himself watching his now boyfriend pace their room back and forth counting quietly to himself until he got to two hundred. Every last part of Hajime wanted to tell him to come to bed. There were times he wanted to yell at him, to tell him to just stop, but he’d seen those panic attacks. He’d seen the harm it did. 

Hajime would never forget the cuts on his friend’s arm. Ten each morning on each arm, ten more at night. He’d never forget the perfect journal of calories he’d found when Tooru had lost so much weight he looked sick. He witnessed Tooru’s hands bleeding as he washed his hands with such vigor they were bleeding. And he’d seen Tooru’s compulsions almost kill him, and so it was better to just deal with the compulsions that were safe, listen his obsession calmly and quietly. 

Tooru stopped pacing, finally finished and check his medicine box for the millionth time that night to make sure he’d taken them. He wouldn’t give them up for the world. His doctor had wanted to wean him off. His depression and anxiety were doing better she had said. Hajime had laughed. Tooru was taken off of them in junior and senior high while volleyball because him obsession and compulsion and every adult around them except for their coach found it healthy. And when he’d finished volleyball, there was a suicide attempt and a six month long stay in the hospital. No, Tooru needed them. If he didn’t have them, what would have to fill in the gaps of his nightly routine. 

“Are you done now?” Hajime tried to keep his voice soft, kind, caring.

“Yeah...I think so.” Tooru licked his lips, sitting down for a moment only to get back up and check again. It went on for another ten minutes before he crawled into bed.

Hajime held him while he trembled and sobbed. He stared at the wall, a nice cream color with white trim. Tooru had insisted on it. A bookshelf was positioned in the middle of the wall with every book the same height, organized alphabetically by author for the time being. The bedside lamp was in the center of the dark wood nightstand. Their blankets were faded and rough from being washed at least twice a day. The temperature in the apartment was freezing to keep the germs from growing and could not be moved. 

His mind wandered to the nightly routine that had the man in his arms shaking. Locks on the door checked twenty times before bed, along with every window in the apartment. Each pillow on the couch fluffed fifteen times. The oven was checked twenty times. The light switch of their room was turn on and back off fifteen times. And his hands were washed five times. Pace the room two hundred times, and check his pills twenty times. 

Tooru hated it.

Obsessive compulsive disorder. 

Those words meant nothing to Tooru. It was a suffocating box that couldn’t do a damn thing to help him. Words meant nothing when his life was driven by whatever obsession had taken over. It wasn’t rational, and he realized that. That was where therapy had gotten him. The things he thought were real weren’t rational. That had sent him into hysterics. They’d locked him up because he wasn’t safe.

Hajime hated it, hated every last person complaining about how hard it was on them that Tooru was the way he was. His parents had said through teary eyes how they were glad there was a name for it. They were so stressed about it. It annoyed them and agitated them. They didn’t understand why therapy wasn’t working. Oh good, volleyball has helped he’s cured. Oh no a suicide attempt? Poor us. 

It didn’t matter what the hell they went through. They didn’t watch him break down or suffer because they walked out of the room because it was too hard on them. Hajime blamed them for the suicide attempts. He blamed himself for the last. If he had just picked up...if he had just not been selfish and answered the tenth phone call, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he could have stopped Tooru from cutting his wrist so many times because he couldn’t stop.

But it wasn’t good to dwell on the past. There was nothing you could change it. Hajime knew that. So he focused on Tooru who was tapping his fingers on Hajime’s back, counting in a shaking whisper. Hajime rubbed in back in the same pattern he always did, ten one way, ten back. It had to be that way. Any mistake in that and Tooru would freak out. 

Tooru was tired. He was always tired. His anxiety was through the roof, and his compulsions got worse at night because what if something happened while they were all asleep? Then the obsessions raced through his mind. What if someone broke in? What if there was a fire? What if…? 

His cocktail of medicine that Tooru clung to with every ounce of his being: Antianxiety, antidepressant, and a sedative. The problem was most nights it didn’t help. It was all Hajime could do to keep him going, to get him through just one more night. He’d sit patiently waiting to go through the door of the therapist’s office while he did his ritual so that everything would go okay and he wouldn’t be locked away again or whatever his worry was. It seemed like every day was getting worse. Nothing scared him more, because when Tooru was like this...suicide became the obsession, and cutting became the compulsion. 

And just like that, they were back to square one and he was in the hospital until they thought he was ready to leave. They never tried hard enough. Hajime knew you couldn’t fix it, there was no simple fix. But he’d watched him get worse and worse. Was there nothing they could do? He’d even gone through electroconvulsive therapy and nothing happened except for the side effect that made it even worse because Tooru focused on them. It was a loop, a pattern. Something that didn’t stop. 

It was exhausting. Being patient with him when all you wanted to do was to tell him to just stop because wouldn’t that be the easy thing to do? As if that wasn’t already what Tooru was begging himself to do. Hajime was also in therapy to learn how to deal with it, to vent out his frustration. He learned to be patient because he loved Oikawa Tooru more than he loved anything in his life and he wanted to be the safe zone for Tooru who needed that more than ever. 

Tooru’s counting was getting softer and softer, and the taps were getting lighter and lighter. Hajime hugged him close, kissed his head. 

“I love you.” 

There was no response. Hajime smiled. Tonight Tooru could sleep, so tomorrow the symptoms would be less. God he hoped they were less. Tooru couldn’t take it another day.

**********************************

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

The word had brought nothing but distress into Tooru’s life. He hated that there was a little box to be put into. Words, a diagnosis. It meant nothing, changed nothing. His anxiety was still on high alert, and the fact that he couldn’t stop it made him depressed and want to die. There was no escape. Medications, therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, electroconvulsive therapy...nothing worked. No escape, no escape but death.

Death was messy. The first time it was pills, but it hadn’t worked. There was vomit everywhere before he fell on the floor only to wake up in a hospital. Two weeks in the psychiatric hospital. The second time was after he’d started cutting and snapping. One hundred snaps or he’d hurt someone. Ten cuts per arm, or someone would die. Ten cuts because twenty, thirty. Nobody answered his calls. They’d died so now he had to die too. Blood was everywhere and he ended up in the hospital again. 

Hospitals were cold, sterile, and suffocating. He couldn’t wear a sweater because he had a history of cutting. Had to have someone sitting with him to make sure he ate because of his history of anorexia. There was no control or sense of self, and Tooru could breathe. He needed control. That was all the could ease him. His compulsions kept control. If he wasn’t in control, then people would get hurt, people would die, he’d be contaminated. 

A new kind of treatment, a new kind of hospital. He didn’t like it much, not that anyone ever liked hospitals. Tooru had to admit that this was nicer, less germs. And it was supposed to be for people like him, people lumped into a box of a diagnosis, who weren’t listened to anymore, who had turned into a diagnosis and ceased to be a person.

There was a set schedule here, a structure that kept his anxiety at bay. Morning meant visits with the therapist to talk through issues. She thought that maybe there was a trigger somewhere in his childhood, but this had been his life since he could remember. Then it was straight to the psychiatrist who took all of twenty minutes talking to him trying to decide what to do with the medication. Med pass happened before lunch, and the nurses would check your mouth. Then group therapy. Now there was a new therapy, one that could help him, fix him. 

It was time. He tapped his fingers on the wall. One hundred. It needed to be one hundred or he would do something wrong and hurt the new therapist. The man stopped him, held his hands down. He couldn’t breathe. His heart was racing, and a lump was rising in his throat, stomach twisting. His legs were weak, and tears were falling. Tooru tried to pull away, and the man pulled him closer calling his name. 

“What are you afraid of?” His voice was soft, soothing, calm. 

“Something will hurt you. Please, please just-”

“No.” 

Tooru’s legs gave out and he slid down the wall, sobbing. The man crouched down next to him, still not letting go. He didn’t understand! Something was going to happen to him if he didn’t get to one hundred. He had to. Nobody had gotten hurt because he always finished, but now this man who was trying to help him wouldn’t let him. It was too much to take. 

His panic attack subsided over time until he was tired and worn out. He stared at the man who slowly let Tooru’s hand go. Immediately Tooru started tapping, counting. Again his hands were pulled away. He whimpered, but the anxiety wasn’t coming on so strong. He tried to pull away. He didn’t have the strength. It went on for what felt like an eternity. 

“When did you think something bad was going to happen? How long after if you didn’t do your ritual?” 

The man smiled, rubbing circles on the back of his hand. Tooru stared at his hand. He needed to go the other way. He’d passed ten and was counting. New tears sprang to his eyes. It was going to happen. He didn’t know when, but soon. Something bad would happen soon and it would all be Tooru’s fault. If he had just…

“Soon.” Tooru’s voice was barely above a whisper. “It would happen soon.”

“Soon? As in what? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen?” He stopped the circles, and every muscle in Tooru’s body tensed.

“Fifteen is too long,” Tooru mumbled.

“It’s been forty-five minutes, and I’m fine. Right? What do you think? Was that you?”

Tooru blinked. It was true. He could breathe a little better, and he felt more control. Maybe...maybe he was getting better. That was all for the day. Each day was going to get more and more intense until he was facing his biggest fears and realizing just how irrational everything was. They didn’t know, they didn’t understand. 

There were monsters, demons that lived inside his head, and as soon as he was finished here it would come back. Maybe he was safe here, maybe they could exercise the demons, keep them at bay. But demons were hungry. Tooru was a warm host.

Exposure Therapy. 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. 

Exposure...Therapy…

It meant no rituals, not allowing compulsions. Someone watched you until you fell asleep. It meant weaning off medication which increased anxiety. The worst day was when he couldn’t wash his hands after touching the flush plunger on the toilet in the bathroom. He’d broken down. 

Exposure Therapy. 

A cure. 

No more anxiety, no more meds, and the scars on his arms were healed and life was good. Six months. But it was there, in the back of his head ready to take over. It wasn’t as strong now, and Tooru was stronger. If he could just…

And now it was over. Sunshine. It wasn’t in an confined courtyard full of germs they were forced to go every day. It was warm and smelled like happiness. Hajime was there. A hug, a kiss, hand in hand. He was cured...for now. But it was there in the back of his head waiting to take over. He wouldn’t let it. He wouldn’t…

Checking, pacing, tapping, flickering lights. 

It was back. There was nobody here to tell him stop, to keep him safe. The demons were back and as he paced the room two-hundred times Hajime watched him. He was being attacked and all Hajime did was watch the demons devour him. Tears filled his eyes. Why wouldn’t he help? Why…?

“Are you done now?”

Tooru wanted to scoff, to laugh and glare at him in the fiercest of ways, but all he could do was sit on the edge of the bed and check for the medicine he’d been put back on. Over and over. Fifteen times. Flicker the lights. Crawl into bed, and tap tap tap Hajime chest while he cried. He was scared of the demons. He wanted to be cured. 

He didn’t finish his count before falling asleep, and when he woke up Hajime was gone. His heart was racing, the room was spinning. Hajime was gone, probably murdered and it was all his fault. If he had just pushed a little harder to keep the sleep at bay…

And Hajime was here with a cup of tea and breakfast in bed. Everything was okay. He tried to push the demons away, but he couldn’t stop washing his hands. His arms itched. He looked fatter. The demons were back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment. I would really appreciated it! :)


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